


proof of isolation

by inverse



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-24 00:57:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/933218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverse/pseuds/inverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>choice is illusory. alternatively, a thesis statement on reconciling differences. band AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	proof of isolation

_our hero withdrew_   
_when there was two_   
_he could not choose one_   
_so there was none_   
\-- the build-up,  
kings of convenience

 

 

1.

Ryouta got his left ear pierced the night before Daiki’s twenty-third birthday, when they were out celebrating it. They were meeting some of the sound mixing techs in a studio in Odaiba before that, and Taiga was in America on short notice, doing some urgent American family things. “That wasn’t what I had in mind when I said I would grant you one wish,” Ryouta sulked when Daiki put forward his request, and Daiki just replied squarely, “You said you’d do anything. And besides, you can’t afford that Ricken I’ve had my eyes on for a while now, so suck it up and make good on your promise.”

After dinner, they went to one of those places that sold cheap earrings and pierced your ears for free if you bought a pair. Ryouta, being the high-maintenance princess that he was, took his time picking out the expensive ones of the bunch – this isn’t nice enough, that looks like it’ll give me an infection, Aominecchi, you’re paying for this, right? It’s only 580 yen, you can spare that much. So Daiki paid up, and it was worth all of that 580 yen watching Ryouta squirm on the stool by the counter and squeal when the lady assistant put the piercing gun to his ear. Then after that Ryouta made Daiki buy him a drink, all the while sitting at the bar clutching his earlobe and exaggerating about how he nearly blacked out from the sting. By the time they left, Daiki was feeling particularly emasculated for somebody who had just turned twenty-three and was supposed to be in the prime of his youth. His eyes were crossing so badly he was getting double vision, and Ryouta was slung over his shoulders, barely functional after a few shots. He flagged down a cab for them, and Ryouta clung to him like a leech in the backseat. When the radio announced that it was 1:01 a.m., Ryouta slurred, “Ahh, happy birthday, Aominecchi,” mouth warm and soft and wet against the back of Daiki’s neck, and in his drunk haze Daiki tried to ignore the dirty look the cabbie shot at them through the rear view mirror.

When they got to their doorstep, Daiki took a full minute to locate the keys in his back pocket while Ryouta leaned against his back, sticky fingers already finding their way under the waistband of his underwear, and Daiki said, squinting and fumbling to get the key the right way in, “Wait, just let me – open the door –”

Ryouta had always had a giant fucking crush on him anyway, ever since they met, so massive that you could probably see it from a space satellite, hovering miles and miles from the surface of the earth, and Daiki knew that, so if Ryouta wanted it, and if he wanted it (at that given time anyway), then wouldn’t it be a win-win situation? He wasn’t in a position to do much quick thinking anyway, all that booze was flowing through his veins like liquid morphine and all the blood in his entire body had already rushed to his cock by the time Ryouta had taken off his own shirt and knelt on the floor and was unzipping Daiki’s jeans. Jesus, he was so impatient, Daiki had barely just locked the door and turned on the lights. “Teeth,” he hissed, fisting one hand in Ryouta’s hair, hard, and Ryouta pulled back a little, eyes tearing slightly from the sudden pain and the conscious effort of sucking cock and trying to breathe at the same time while seventy-five percent drunk. He said, “Sorry,” and tried to open his mouth wider.

So that was technically two things Ryouta did for him on his birthday, the earring and the fucking, but Daiki wasn’t going to get pedantic about it. He didn’t request for the latter, after all, and truth be told, he had a feeling Ryouta wasn’t doing it on accident or being drunkenly coy or anything like that, Ryouta wasn’t normally that shit at holding his liquor, and okay, if two people wanted to pretend, then they could pretend.

“That hurts,” Ryouta had complained later as Daiki fucked into him, face red, flesh warm, voice uneven, and Daiki wasn’t sure then whether he was talking about the sex or about Daiki’s teeth nipping away at his freshly-pierced ear.

 

 

2.

Taiga came back from America two weeks later with a large crate of equipment and, Daiki suspected, some emotional scarring. “Here are the guitar picks you wanted,” he said, pulling out something from the seemingly unending depths of the cardboard box and throwing it on what limited space was left on the coffee table. “And the strap, that’s yours, Kise. And these new drumsticks, these are mine. Does anyone need new cables? Or new strings? I bought some.”

His grandmother had passed away. He called back a week ago to break the news and told Daiki that he was going to stay for one more week to settle everything that needed settling, and all Daiki could really do was stand there by the telephone and go, “Okay,” waiting silently until Taiga thanked him for understanding and then ended the call, but not before wishing him a belated happy birthday. Daiki sort of wished he hadn’t; it was a little macabre to have talked about a birthday and a death within such a short span of time.

“You got your ear pierced?” Taiga said, squinting at Ryouta’s ear when he emerged from his room.

“Uh, yeah,” Ryouta replied, reaching out for the small package that Taiga had left on the table for him. “Cute, no? Some chicks really dig this stuff.”

Daiki stayed silent where he was, lying on the couch. They hadn’t talked about it since that night, both he and Ryouta, out of some silent, unspoken agreement. The next morning, when he had woken up, the first thing he saw was Ryouta’s face, dangerously close to his own, hair looking unnaturally good for something so messy and tousled, eyes wide. The second thing that he noticed was that he was lying in bed with Ryouta when he normally wouldn’t be, and when he put two and two together the realisation hit him over the head like a sledgehammer. It would have hurt more if he weren’t already having a colossal hangover. He bolted upright.

“Shit,” he’d said in response to just about everything that was going through his head. “Fuck, sorry.”

“Why?” Ryouta asked, getting off his side of the bed and disappearing into the bathroom. It was then that Daiki noticed that where he was wasn’t normally where he would have woken up, and with the help of some squinting he figured out that it was Taiga’s room. They’d had sex in Taiga’s fucking bedroom, in Taiga’s fucking bed. As if trying to figure out an answer to Ryouta’s response wasn’t enough of a headache. He tried to recall what the hell they were doing last night to have gotten to this point, then belatedly realised that they were out celebrating his birthday, which had to mean that it _was_ his birthday. God.

“Are you hungry, Aominecchi?” Ryouta asked from the bathroom, amidst the sounds of the shower. “I could whip up something. I think there’re eggs in the pantry, I could make toast.”

“Forget it,” Daiki had mumbled in the general direction of his own lap, clad only with the blanket, “you can’t cook for shit. Let’s eat out.”

They ate at a nearby ramen chain later, where Ryouta was his loud, annoying usual self. He pressed the wrong button on the ticket machine, so Daiki ended up with a normal serving instead of a large one, but getting another bowl and splitting it between the two of them easily rectified that. All throughout lunch (they’d woken up at half past eleven – or, at least, Daiki did) Ryouta rambled on about what they should do next, or maybe they should give it a rest today? Did you know I got a text from Moriyama-senpai when I woke up today? It’s been years since I last saw him but he still wants me to arrange group dates for him. Daiki barely managed to listen to everything while adding copious amounts of chilli oil to his noodles, even though it was already spicy. It sounded like Ryouta had gotten the message, just from Daiki’s reaction alone – not that Daiki explicitly meant it, or even meant to show it. He did feel genuinely sorry for acting out of pure instinct, and if Ryouta wanted to approach the issue, he would be game to talk about it. It didn’t stop the new earring or the marks on Ryouta’s neck from being on full display, of course, and Daiki steadfastly kept his eyes on his bowl all the time. Nonetheless it was all becoming unsettlingly normal once again, to Daiki’s relief, but he couldn’t shake off the memory of Ryouta looking right into his eyes when he’d woken up, as if he’d already been watching for some time, as if he was expecting something.

But that was two weeks ago, and in any case Daiki had taken it upon himself to throw out Taiga’s sheets and buy new ones to replace them, and to completely try to wipe out all traces of them having utilised his bedroom for something they shouldn’t have. He called Satsuki to ask her what kind of disinfectant spray she used, bought an entire bottle, and sprayed down Taiga’s room liberally – when Ryouta wasn’t in, of course. In the meantime life in the apartment reverted to what it was pre-fuck, and Ryouta had either completely put the incident behind him as a one-off, or was a very good actor. They wrote songs and tested out new demos and Ryouta would bug him about clothes and girls and partake briefly in some of his AV-watching sessions, but nothing further than that. Daiki decided that he could be an accomplice, if Ryouta wanted to rescind both their culpabilities.

 

 

3.

He found Taiga in the room they used as a studio in the afternoon, after he’d given out all the goods he’d bought. He was getting bored of lying on the couch going through old gravure magazines anyway, and it didn’t feel like the right time or mood for a fap, so he figured he’d catch up with Taiga after having not seen him for weeks. Taiga was lying spread-eagled on the floor when Daiki found him, surrounded by all the equipment he’d stowed aside to make space for himself. He gave a half-hearted grin when he noticed Daiki walking in.

“Hey,” he began. Then, “Life is,” he pondered, “short? It’s really short.”

“Mmhm,” Daiki replied, and laid down as well, next to Taiga, hands on the back of his head. He wasn’t used to talking about anything philosophical or personal or profound in detail, and neither was he any good at it, so he left it at that. And besides, when someone was upset, they didn’t need words. Companionship was superior. The parquet floor felt a little damp against his skin, presumably from the humidity, and outside, the sunlight streamed in from in between the branches of the tree that sat firmly from across the window, colouring Taiga’s face in small, odd glowing patches.

They stayed like that for a minute or two. Then Daiki suggested, staring at the off-white expanse of the ceiling, “Wanna go thrash it all out? You didn’t play at all when you went back home, did you? Or maybe you wanna go to the park, shoot some hoops.”

“Yeah, no,” Taiga said, not moving from where he was lying. “I didn’t think about playing at all. But you’re right, I do wanna go thrash it all out.”

“Great,” Daiki responded, getting up and extending a hand to Taiga to help him sit up as well, “let’s go.”

Taiga was Daiki’s favourite person to be loud with, but he was also Daiki’s favourite person to be quiet with. He would rather jump off a cliff than admit it, of course, but there was no question about it; sometimes Daiki wondered if, appearances aside, they were separated at birth. When they first met, through Tetsuya, all Daiki could think about was how irresistibly punchable that face was, but that was probably down to the fact that Taiga was like a mirror through which Daiki could see himself. Taiga was loud and rude and stupid, but those were the things that agitated Daiki precisely because he was the same. They did not, definitely, get off to a good start.

They first clashed the first time Taiga invited them back to eat supper. It was late, after they’d practised for the entire evening in a spare music room at the university where both Taiga and Tetsuya were studying, and Taiga’s house was in the vicinity. He was going to cook something, so Daiki looked around his bachelor pad in a fit of extreme jealousy while Tetsuya sat on the pristinely white designer sofa, still as a statue. There was a rack of magazines in Taiga’s living room, on top of which sat a – miniature cactus? It was almost cute, a big guy like him being into this sort of thing. Taiga emerged from the kitchen, holding two very large bowls of rice, when he spotted Daiki scrutinising the cactus literally two centimetres away from his own face.

“Hey, put that down,” he said instantly, and Daiki rolled his eyes. “Huh? Why so anxious? It’s from your ex?” Taiga snatched it out of his hands and replaced it on the rack.

“Wow, calm down, it’s just a cactus,” he drawled, “I wasn’t planning on filching it.”

“Keep your hands to yourself,” Taiga scowled, then, quietly, “asshole.”

“Hey, say it to my face, fucker.” That was when Tetsuya intervened.

“Sorry,” Tetsuya said, apologising on his behalf afterwards. “He doesn’t have any manners.” Supper was a mostly silent affair, after which Daiki had to reluctantly admit to himself that Taiga was a fucking amazing cook, even if it was just Chinese-style stir-fried beef and miso soup. It tasted like something a mother would cook, with love and warmth and all that shit, like proper homecooked food. He didn’t say it out loud, of course.

Their second argument was about basketball. He found out that Taiga played it for fun back in America and was an NBA enthusiast, so naturally he had to prove that he was better than the returnee at everything, even the things that Taiga had probably immersed himself in for years. Their discussion culminated in a fierce debate about whether Kobe Bryant was better than LeBron James. “Don’t talk shit about LeBron James,” Taiga hissed, and Daiki replied, “I’ll say all the shit about him that I want.” It resulted in fisticuffs, and Tetsuya threatened to call the cops after Daiki nearly tore the collar of Taiga’s shirt and was about to deliver his best right hook.

And the third one, which was, at that time, seemingly the straw that broke the camel’s back, happened when they were practising together, once. Taiga couldn’t keep time. They had been trying to record something for like two hours already, and every time the drumming came out botched.

“I’m not the one who can’t keep time,” Taiga said defiantly, defending himself when Daiki brought it up, “I have no idea what to hell to do when you improvise so often and come up with different things every single time we do a different take.”

Daiki’s jaw dropped. “Ad-libs,” he told Taiga, “are the lifeblood of creativity. It’s the way I play. Keep up.”

“No, _you_ keep up with the timing.”

Daiki complained to Tetsuya about it after that, of all the people to pick, you pick this one? He couldn’t play in the same band with somebody who was hell-bent on arguing with him on every turn. And Tetsuya said, conclusive and omniscient, “To be fair, Aomine-kun, you picked those fights. And it’s quite obvious to me that you’re very alike. I don’t know why you’re arguing in the first place.”

Afterwards every grudging bit of Taiga that he got to know turned into a piece of a puzzle slowly unlocked – how they had the same monstrous appetites, how they liked the same bands, how they never did well in school, how they liked to play basketball as a hobby to let off steam, how they, if they were not so passionate about music, would have chosen basketball, how Taiga’s no-frills, straightforward style of drumming complemented the stuff he came up with on the guitar, after they learnt how to compromise. Of course there remained mysteries. Why Taiga was all alone here, in Japan, if he had any other friends, what his family was like, his past, the mystery cactus, which now seemed to glare at Daiki whenever he walked past the magazine rack, a ring which he wore around his neck and never seemed to remove, like some keepsake or a relic. But he was now familiar enough, for starters. They still argued these days, but neither of them would stay angry at each other for more than an afternoon. Viewed narcissistically, spending time with Taiga was a lot like spending a lot of time with himself, but it was comfortable knowing that, regardless of whatever they were doing, they were probably on the same wavelength, without needing much to be communicated. Daiki wasn’t that good with words, so he liked that.

 

 

4.

The apartment was Taiga’s. Technically it was Taiga’s father’s, because it was his name on all the documents and as such Taiga actually really owned nothing at all, but every single person who was related to Taiga was in the US. They’d sent him back to Japan to “get in touch with his roots”, which was mostly a failed exercise, other than Taiga having gotten to know all sorts of Japanese cuisine very intimately. He got cable so that he could watch his American shows, and there were boxes and boxes of DVDs of this show called “Friends” in the TV cabinet (which Daiki figured out by consulting an English-Japanese dictionary for ten whole minutes).

“Those are my cousin’s, she gave them to me as a gift,” Taiga explained, but that didn’t stop him from popping them into the DVD player ever so often to watch it on that 50-inch HDTV of his over cans of beer or instant “macaroni and cheese”, the appeal of which Daiki never really got.

Three years after moving back, Taiga was about as Japanese as cheeseburgers. Not the kind you found in Lotteria, the real kind, with the works, that Taiga would make in his spare time during weekends, which Daiki had the privilege of eating, enjoying, and still finding them perceptibly foreign-tasting, according to his own palate. It didn’t matter that Taiga lived in Japan until it was time for him to enrol in grade school; all that mattered was that he was Los Angeles through and through from the ages of seven to twenty-one, and he still wanted to go surfing when the sun was out and missed watching the occasional NBA playoff at the Staples Centre. All the Japaneseness that remained about him was more or less biological and linguistic in nature. And to be honest, after these three years, his Japanese, both spoken and written, were still complete crap, which was saying a lot by Daiki’s own standards. Taiga still had trouble reading the kanji on the subway maps. Sometimes it felt like he found his way around town by sheer force of will, and with some help from the romanisation on underground subway signs.

Enough about Taiga. How they all came to be living together, however, was another long story in itself. A brief summary:

At first it was just Daiki and Tetsuya. At that point, they were still high school schoolmates, and they weren’t a band yet; they’d met through the rock club and were involved in various bit roles in preparing for school festivals and performances. Tetsuya was actual trash at playing the guitar, no matter how hard he tried – acoustic, electric, or bass – but he was decent at the keyboard. Some people just weren’t wired to handle string instruments. In any case, they were pretty close at that time, but only just close enough to vaguely consider the possibility of playing together after they graduated high school. The bespectacled, overachieving freak who sat behind Daiki in class, who happened to have a diploma in piano performance and who kept his equally freakish, spiderlike fingers taped up when he wasn’t playing, caught wind of this.

“Kuroko’s really just average,” he sniffed.

“Yeah, but a band doesn’t need the second coming of Mozart, either,” Daiki bit back, “which I guess you’re busily trying to become.” Glasses freak didn’t talk to him for the rest of the term, and also refused to lend him any notes.

Whatever it was, the two of them did play together for a while after graduating. Nonetheless anybody would concede that merely a guitar and a keyboard didn’t constitute a band, unless they were going down the instrumental route. Things were okay when they were still in school, because the other members in the club were willing to jam with them and record amateur-sounding stuff, but after graduation everyone else had either stopped doing it or already grouped up with other people.

“I’m sure we’ll find what we’re looking for soon,” Tetsuya would always say when they met up to practise, even when all Daiki did was groan and reply, “It’s impossible, no one’s left.”

Sure enough, it was Tetsuya who found what they were looking for. Tetsuya was attending college then, just the beginning of his first semester, while Daiki was bumming around at home, looking for ways to customise his cheap-ass Yamaha knockoff so it’d sound more like a Fender. Tetsuya was going to check out the clubs at his university at first in order to look for some potential recruits, but during one of his Economics 101 lectures, one Kagami Taiga, completely lost with regard to what the lecturer was saying, asked Tetsuya if he could take a look at what he’d taken down. Turned out that he moved back to Japan from America, and when he was there, he’d dabbled in a makeshift band and played the drums, and sometimes rhythm guitar. He definitely wouldn’t mind helping out, if they couldn’t find someone to stand in for the drums.

Taiga’s addition to their non-entity of a band didn’t exactly get off to a great start, because Daiki took an immediate, irrational dislike to him. Tetsuya suggested that it might have been because, “Maybe you feel like he threatens your existence?” and Daiki replied, “Don’t be stupid, it’s because he’s an idiot.” The look on Tetsuya’s face suggested that he was thinking, “Well, you’re an idiot too,” but in any case things improved after they’d been practising together for a while, just to try things out. A few months after that, they started recording demos at a homemade studio in Taiga’s live-alone apartment, consisting of a laptop, pirated recording software, and a shitty mic, and realised, once they fell asleep there one too many times writing new songs, that they might as well move in if they were going to be serious about this. Taiga and Tetsuya both applied for leave of absence from college to keep the band going for some time (Taiga quit for real afterwards because he might as well have failed out).

And because all three of them sounded particularly crappy on all the demos songs recorded (Daiki – couldn’t hold a tune, Taiga – couldn’t hold a tune, Tetsuya – inaudible and flat), they needed someone who could sing. Ryouta was, therefore, the last addition.

Daiki didn’t have time to announce all the changes in the lineup because of how much time they spent working on their first self-produced EP, and besides, nobody would have cared even if he did. Surprisingly, though, Satsuki did. “Dai-chan,” she squealed over the phone after he sent her several copies of the finalised CD (Daiki privately termed it the Kise Ryouta Squealing Effect, for lack of a better name, apparent in women aged seven to seventy), “when did you get hold of such a cute frontman? I showed my friends and they all agree, and he sings so well too! Better than you do, anyway. You think you could introduce us? What’s up with you, you didn’t even bother to tell me –” She wouldn’t shut up, so Daiki hung up on her.

One year on, Tetsuya decided that he wasn’t cut out for this band business for long after all, preferring the company of the written letter (and citing fatigue, the bastard, but it was true he couldn’t last anything past a 30-minute gig), and went back to school. So from then on it was just the three of them, Daiki, Taiga, and Ryouta, come together in an almost ridiculously haphazard fashion, the common factor (Tetsuya) removed, and when Daiki thought about it, it was actually like living together with two strangers whom he had to learn to slowly coexist with, although he did learn how, in the end. At least Ryouta didn’t have to go through that. He got on like a house on fire with anybody, if he wanted it to happen.

And that was it. That was their band, having come into existence for approximately four years and one quarter, starting from when Taiga joined in, and lived together, whether wholly or partially, for about three – not that Daiki was really keeping count or anything. Time flew by when you weren’t noticing.

 

 

5.

In March the next year they got an invitation to perform at a music festival in Hong Kong. “Is it gonna be cold there? What should I bring?” Ryouta asked in disbelief, bouncing around the living room with the programme in hand. It’d arrived in the mail two days after their manager called to tell them about the news.

“Stop jumping, Kise, you’re going to destroy the flooring,” Taiga grumbled.

“Sorry, I’m just excited!” Ryouta exclaimed, now bent over the back of the couch and balancing himself where the plane of his stomach met the leather, feet off the ground, surveying the programme as if it were made of solid gold. “I’ve never done this sort of thing before. And why did they invite us? We have fans in Hong Kong? I had no idea! Although it does make sense, kind of, I have fans everywhere I go …”

“Man, don’t flatter yourself,” Daiki said from where he was sprawled on the floor, in front of the television. “I have loads of fans too.”

The schedule was as follows: They’d arrive in Hong Kong on a mid-April evening, rest, have rehearsals the next day at the venue, and then the concert was scheduled for the day after that. It was really a showcase more than anything, with just two headlining bands which were relatively more well-known, and the rest were just up-and-comers. Still, better than not being given the opportunity for more exposure. They were due to fly back to Japan the morning after, since travel and accommodation expenses were being borne by their label, and everything was administered internally. “You wanna go take a look around?” their manager said, after Taiga asked if they could extend their stay. “Tough, get your own tickets.”

Ryouta went out in the evening to some get-together, presumably with his old schoolmates. “You guys don’t wanna come along?” he asked while putting on his shoes at the door. Looking pointedly at Daiki, he said, “There’s gonna be models there, you know. Really cute ones.”

“You don’t think it’s gonna be awkward for us? It’s just your seniors going there, isn’t it?”

“Kagamicchiiii,” Ryouta whined, switching targets, but Taiga only shrugged and said, “I feel like staying in tonight. Sorry.”

Wearing an expression like that of a house pet that was left outside the house in a particularly bad downpour, Ryouta pouted, “Okay, I get it,” and left.

For the next hour Daiki and Taiga mostly spent their time in silence. Taiga was hooked up to his laptop with a pair of headphones, and Daiki was trying to edit the rough drafts of some tunes that were being considered for their next record, to no avail. The inspiration just wasn’t there. Maybe he needed to do something exciting, to keep the ideas coming. Belatedly he remembered that there was an AV he’d bought last week, but hadn’t had the time to watch. And well, since he wasn’t being very productive, it couldn’t hurt to watch it right now.

He retrieved the DVD from the stash in his bedroom, switched on the television, and then waved the DVD a little in Taiga’s direction in order to get his attention, as if to ask, “You want in?” Taiga looked up and frowned at him, removing his earphones.

“You’re really gonna watch porn? On my TV? How many times have you done this without me knowing?”

“Hey, c’mon, we’ve been living together for so long. Just sharing the goods with a buddy,” Daiki declared, popping the disc into the DVD player. “You’re not busy with anything, are you?”

Taiga eyed the cover art cautiously. “What’s the title?”

“Aoi Natsuki 20 Creampie Special.”

“Sounds vile.”

They sat down together in front of the TV anyway, despite Taiga’s protest. The video started with the usual legal warning, and then continued into what seemed to be footage of the model prancing around a posh-looking apartment wearing some needlessly complicated piece of lingerie. Pretty cute, even in motion, which was rare. The production companies these days really liked to lay it on thick with the Photoshop on the covers, so you were lucky if what you got onscreen more or less matched what was being advertised. Was Daiki going to get this gratification by attending Ryouta’s get-together? Probably not. Maybe with twenty times the amount of effort and money. Next to him, Taiga cleared his throat, eyes stuck on the screen, watching the film like it was some kind of nature documentary on NHK, and Daiki wondered if he should have gotten Taiga to watch this together in the first place. He didn’t seem to be the kind of person who was familiar with pornography or the like. For three long years, Daiki had never managed to find out what sort of porn Taiga liked. If he had a porn stash of his own, it was very well-hidden indeed. It was just as well that Ryouta wasn’t in. Or maybe it would have been better if he were around? Daiki couldn’t decide, but the mood was already decidedly awkward with or without a third person being present.

The director of this particular porno certainly didn’t waste any time getting right to the action. After that brief montage of arguably non-incendiary clips of the model looking all cute in her undies, the video cut right to a scene of her making out with not one, not two, but three other low-budget porn actors, all of whom were caressing her body. Daiki couldn’t help but sneak a look or two at Taiga, just to see how well he was managing the experience. It was kind of like watching two things for the price of one. As the men started to undress the girl, massaging her sizeable chest – Daiki wouldn’t be watching anything without huge boobs in it, of course – Taiga swallowed visibly, and then frowned, as if willing himself to pay attention and focus. His face was starting to flush, and it reminded Daiki of – well. He turned back to the television to catch the girl moaning, her face a picture of either genuine or well-rehearsed shame. It was all red, right up to the tips of her ears.

“You could jerk off if you want to, you know,” Daiki said to no one in particular, keeping his eyes glued to the screen. “That’s what I usually do when I watch these things. Most guys do.”

There was no response from Taiga. One of the porn actor guys had now dipped a hand beneath the girl’s lacy panties and she was shrieking like a banshee. Daiki snuck another glance to his left. Taiga was now looking incredibly embarrassed, as if having been caught watching something he shouldn’t have, and then being forced to watch the rest of it as punishment. He was sitting cross-legged, hunched over his legs, but Daiki could see the outline of his cock, straining hard against the cotton of his sweats. That was quick. Maybe it was too long since he’d masturbated or watched porn or had sex. Taiga never brought girls home, and now Daiki wondered if it was because he and Ryouta were living in his apartment and being a hindrance to his social and romantic life.

“I, uh, gonna get some beer,” Daiki said, getting up. His t-shirt was stuck to his back with sweat. He turned to look at Taiga. “You want one?”

“No,” Taiga replied, a little too quickly, staring back out of reflex, then looking away, back at the television screen. “You know what, I haven’t showered. I think – yeah, I’m gonna go shower. You go ahead.”

When Daiki emerged from the kitchen, the door to Taiga’s bedroom was shut, so he sat back down on the floor again, back against the couch, and opened his beer, feeling somewhat apologetic for no good reason. The AV was now about twenty minutes in and still within the foreplay stages. Normally he’d be all about looking at the tits, but now he felt like he was somehow more about the sex, so he fast-forwarded to the midpoint of the tape. He drank from his beer, watching the model getting her brains fucked out. Someone else was playing with her ample breasts, and another cock was in her mouth. Daiki placed the beer can on the coffee table, then snuck his hand beneath the waistband of his boxers, palming his own half-hard cock lightly. It was starting to get really good.

As he jerked himself off to the rhythm of the fucking onscreen, he caught himself thinking about what kind of girls Taiga would like. What kind of porn he’d watch. If he’d excused himself to deal with his hard-on in the privacy of his own bathroom? Probably. It was really weird, now that he gave it some thought – he’d never once caught Taiga expressing interest in all the porn mags lying around the house. If he ever did, he was placing them into stacks when he wanted to clean the house. Even Ryouta would tell Daiki about the kind of girls he’d meet at gatherings and stuff. Maybe Taiga was – no way. Daiki thrust up into his hand, faster now, aware of the sudden slickness of his own palm. He was sure he’d seen Taiga stare, misty-eyed, at a girl or two on the street. If Taiga had the same taste as he did in food and music and sports, maybe he would have the same taste as he did in girls. They could share. What are friends for, right? It could be a really cute girl, hair dyed a sweet caramel blonde, with huge tits. Taiga could fuck her and Daiki could take her mouth, just like how it was now, on the television screen. All of a sudden, in that moment, he was ridiculously obsessed with the question of Taiga’s preferences – he just needed to know, and it had never occurred before to him that he didn’t know or didn’t care – would he let Daiki titfuck the girl as she sat on Taiga’s own lap, riding his cock, or would he prefer to fuck her from behind, like what Daiki was watching, flesh slapping against flesh, with wet, loud, obscene sounds, his cock driving deep and hard into her pussy, and, ahh – fuck.

The can of beer, now looking quite lonely, was warmed to room temperature and utterly unappetising. Daiki wiped himself off, turned the television off, took a shower himself, and went to bed. Except he couldn’t really fall asleep – his mind was racing. He pretended to be fast asleep, though, when Ryouta returned at around two a.m., barging into the room they shared and crashing into something at the foot of his own bed in the dark. Ryouta smelled like a walking cloud of cologne and perfume, and a bit of sweat.

 

 

6.

It wasn’t that they were without accomplishment. Most bands were still in the teething period when they hit the five-year mark, and not every one of them could get a huge contract with a huge label like Sony or Avex right off the bat and sing the ending credits to some midnight anime screening. So yes, they had a few EPs, and their first full-length album was due to be released soon, and if you looked at it long-term (like thirty years long-term) this was absolutely just the beginning. Getting signed was just the first step. Next thing you knew, they’d be having world tours.

For a bunch of strangers, they made strangely coherent music. In a way, the entire project was something that Daiki and Tetsuya had come up with between themselves on a whim, and Taiga and Ryouta had just been roped in without any idea of the repercussions or consequences. Way too nice and compromising for a bunch of strangers, when you think about the fact that there was absolutely no guarantee of any return. Plus they were all now slumming it out at Taiga’s for free. It was the deal of the century.

Life in a band was wildly different from what Daiki had imagined it to be. One could call it some kind of misplaced romance, but when he was in high school, he’d pictured it to have much to do with the faraway land of sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll (more of the sex, less of the drugs). As reality would have it, it was more like an office job, except with more guitars. They were contractually obligated to produce at least two more EPs or singles and two full-length records under their current label within a five-year framework, their manager did most of the paperwork, lots of networking was involved, invitations to the smallest parties and the most obscure events ever, and they had two and a half “groupies”, out of which two were basically Ryouta’s stalkers. They weren’t making a lot of bank. And to be honest, Daiki wasn’t sure if he’d fancy that kind of lifestyle at all now. It’d tire him out, and he’d attended so many parties before where he just wanted to go home and sleep or zone out or come up with more material after the actual performances instead of schmoozing around and watching other people have fun. He met this girl once though, at a club in Ginza, who approached him after they were done playing. She had B-cup tits, but she had a nice smile and killer legs, and that made up for it. They chatted for a while before her friend whisked her away, and he’d forgotten to get her number. That was nice.

Once, right after Tetsuya just quit, they were due for an interview with some indie magazine. He’d left after they’d completed their second EP, saying that he’d wanted to at least finish the job, and the three of them were left to deal with the promotional work (of which there was little, at that time). Of course, the most questions went to Ryouta, he being the frontman and therefore the most recognisable and most suitable candidate for spokesperson. Of course he knew nothing about Daiki’s creative process, since it was Daiki who wrote most of the stuff, with Taiga embellishing some of it. He just sang and played the guitar, sometimes.

“I don’t know,” he offered cheerfully, “I just sing whatever they compose! But don’t you think it’s great? They write really great songs. I’m lucky to be able to sing them.”

The journalist raised an eyebrow, so Taiga cut in, “He does an amazing job of it. We don’t have to give him a lot of guidance – he just takes the lyrics and the music and comes up with his own interpretation. It’s spot-on every time. He’s awesome.”

“Sounds like you guys are a little haphazardly put-together. So who is it exactly that writes the material for your band?”

Daiki raised his hand awkwardly, then remembered that they weren’t being interrogated. Their entire table did have the atmosphere of an interrogation hanging over it, though; Hashimoto-san seemed less than impressed by these three virtually unknown young men and looked like he would rather be elsewhere talking to people who were more established. Maybe they didn’t fit his payroll. 

“We, uh, we always wanted to go for a more stripped-down kind of sound,” Daiki explained, while Ryouta fiddled nervously with the spoon in his cup of café au lait. “So we don’t have a bassist. It works for us. Mostly it’s just me, playing the main lines, Kagami here does the drums, and that’s mostly all we need. If you wanna talk about the material, then it’s also … mostly me,” he ended eloquently.

They answered a few more questions about their lineup, their vanishing keyboardist, their newly-released single, and plans for the future. Hashimoto-san got more incisive as the interview went by, but his attitude didn’t let up, and everything about his body language said, “Just let me get out of here so I can go back home and have dinner and then give this article to my boss.” The entire thing lasted approximately twenty minutes more, after which Hashimoto shook hands with all of them curtly like a salaryman, and wished them all the best before disappearing out the front door of the café, where they were being interviewed.

“Well, that was a mess,” Taiga commented, after they footed the bill (Hashimoto’s espresso inclusive) and stepped outdoors.

“He was being a real dick about everything, anyway,” Daiki said, shoving his hands into the pockets on his windbreaker. He made a mental note not to purchase any copies of that magazine in future, if he could help it.

“Ahh, it’s cold,” Ryouta said, putting his gloved hands to his face in an attempt to warm himself up. The tips of his nose and his ears were already turning pink. “And I’m hungry! The coffee there was really terrible. Can we have hotpot?”

“Sure. Should I cook? I’m not sure I have enough ingredients for it at home, though.”

“I’m starving, I want to have it now.” Ryouta peeked out from Taiga’s left to stare at Daiki, who was walking on Taiga’s right. “Aominecchi, what do you think?”

“Huh? Not hungry.”

“Idiot, you still hung up over that?” Taiga laughed. “Forget it, your feelings are probably not even on that asshole’s radar. You coming along or not?”

That was the first time Daiki thought that, in the end, even strangers would have to become familiar, if you spent enough time with them. He and Tetsuya had always been closer before, which left Taiga and Ryouta to themselves (even if Ryouta always tried to involve himself in everything that everyone did), so it suddenly became obvious to him that he had become the odd one out, shortly after Tetsuya quit. But nothing about Taiga or Ryouta changed after that, and even the space that Tetsuya had left after moving out was hardly salient, perhaps due to the fact that Tetsuya never took up much space anyway. Slowly Daiki learned to treat his own space like theirs and vice versa. Taiga using his toothbrush accidentally one morning, still in the throes of sleep, became an inside joke. Whatever foods Ryouta’s fans gave him on Valentine’s and Christmas _and_ New Year’s Eve became food for the entire household. They’d hang around studios and stages after sessions and events to goof around and listen to Ryouta sing the Doraemon theme song, mic and all, in a gloriously large venue, laughing and wondering if they should actually add it to their setlist next time. Without Daiki noticing, they’d become a single unit. Whenever someone left the apartment for an extended time – whether for a visit home or to attend to something important – the house would always seem a bit larger. They’d learned to coexist until it became habit.

 

 

7.

The apartment was something of a riot on the morning of the flight itself. The drum set in the studio had already been cleared out, collected by their manager the day before for separate delivery, and their guitars were back in their kits, but otherwise packing was a disaster because Ryouta couldn’t find his passport and Daiki couldn’t find enough clean underwear. Or enough clean t-shirts. Their room was, as it stood, a mess.

“Have you ever thought of this thing called bringing your own dirty laundry to the hamper,” Taiga remarked from the living room, at least ninety percent done with his own suitcase. “I already do everyone’s laundry, I think that’s the least you could do.”

“Shut it,” Daiki snapped, rummaging through his closet. “Hey, why don’t you just lend me your clothes?”

“I should have started packing last week,” Ryouta wailed, looking through the drawers in the dresser.

It worked out in the end anyway; Taiga lent a few t-shirts to Daiki somewhat reluctantly (but no trousers, so Daiki was left with one fresh pair of jeans and one other week-old pair), and Ryouta found his passport underneath a stack of fashion magazines. It was really anyone’s guess why he would leave something so important there. They reached the airport just in time to spend fifteen minutes running to the gate right before it closed, and on the plane Ryouta mostly stared in astonishment out the window as if it was the first time he was on a plane (it wasn’t). Taiga spent the entire flight paying rapt attention to his iPod, and Daiki was stuck in between the two of them, wishing that the four hours would be up sooner rather than later. He hated flying.

Hong Kong was charming, but also kind of dirty. At least it wasn’t so for the first hour, when they wandered around the airport trying to locate immigration, and when Ryouta nearly made them late for their ride by lingering a minute too long in the Gucci duty-free store, until their chartered bus brought them to the front of their hotel, arranged by management, tucked away unobtrusively between two squat, yellowing commercial buildings, decorated profusely with colourful neon signs. It was raining when they arrived in the evening, and when they stepped off the bus, all Daiki could smell was the stench of drain water. He knew they weren’t exactly at the top of their label’s list, but damn, maybe they could have gotten some better accommodation in an area that was more upscale.

Or maybe it was just the general locale. The inside of the hotel looked decent, like any other midrange hotel would look like, with a reception that was just a little smaller than average, illuminated by warm, yellow lamps. Taiga took care of everything while Daiki and Ryouta started elbowing each other out of boredom, since he was the only person who could speak more than two words of English (the other two languages in use being Mandarin and Cantonese). Then they checked into their rooms.

“Room” should have been it. No wonder the receptionist was staring at them funny. It was a standard queen room – with one queen-sized bed and another extra, foldout single. And the room itself was a little cramped to boot. Daiki could imagine what their manager had to say about it. “It’s cheaper for the company. You want bigger rooms? Go book ‘em yourself.”

“Dibs on this one,” Ryouta shouted, diving onto the big one, not even removing his shoes, and landed face-first. “Oof.”

“Don’t be an idiot, where will we sleep?” Taiga asked, stowing their luggage into the space beneath the closet.

Ryouta had now arranged himself into a come-hither pose, lying on his side on the bed, like some Calvin Klein underwear model. “Well, either of you are free to share with me,” he said, patting the empty space next to him, wearing the kind of expression he reserved for picking up girls at clubs. “Or both of you could share, if you wanted. If you don’t mind the squeeze.”

Taiga frowned and said, “You really think that bed could hold three big guys,” but Daiki got the insinuation. He knew Ryouta was probably joking around, like he always did, in that incredibly suggestive manner that he always managed to get away with, but that didn’t make it any less provocative. He cleared his throat and pretended to explore the minibar.

“Wow, this minibar is really shitty,” he said, staring down its empty insides. “There’s nothing in it.”

“If only Kurokocchi were still with us,” Ryouta lamented, sounding almost dramatic, and as if Tetsuya had died and gone to heaven. “Then we could have gotten two rooms. And I could have roomed with him. And left the two of you to yourselves.” What the hell was he trying to say?

“Kuroko doesn’t even like you that much,” Taiga snorted, removing his jacket.

 

 

8.

The girls in all the Wan Chai clubs had flocked to Ryouta like flies to honey. “Oh, Japanese!” was the predictable, excited comeback when Ryouta said, “I’m from Japan, sorry,” in the world’s most stilted English because he couldn’t understand any of their come-ons, and “kawaii” was apparently the only Japanese word anyone knew. Bonus points for the chick who said “kakkoi” instead. Conversely no one approached Daiki, who was aware that he was wearing an expression like walking death, and did not want to do much about it. A bartender said something to him with a somewhat pitying expression as he was handed his drink, and Taiga semi-translated, yelling over the music, “I had no idea what he said, but I’m pretty sure it was probably something along the lines of, why’re you so glum?”

By the time the night actually ended Daiki was wondering exactly whose genius it was that led to them hopping from bar to bar the night before they were supposed to have rehearsals, then remembered through his fog of a headache, induced obviously by heavy drinking, that it was he who had said that he was bored and maybe they should hit the streets because they wouldn’t have much time to look around if the rest of the trip was going to be spent on the concert. It didn’t matter if it was he who suggested it, anyway, because the damage was done, and he was out cold by the time the early hours of the morning came along, all the way till sunrise.

“Good morning,” Taiga said, when he’d woken up. Taiga was sitting backwards on the only chair in the room in order to face the beds. It seemed like he’d just showered – he was towelling his hair. “Do you remember what happened last night? You macked on our taxi driver on the way back. Some fifty-year-old geezer.”

“Oh god,” Daiki replied, rubbing his eyes. Ryouta, who was lying on his front next to him, bracing himself up with his elbows and toying with his mobile phone, said, “Yeah, you should have seen the look on his face. He looked ready to call the cops on us.”

Taiga got off the chair and entered the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. The sound of the hairdryer escaped through the gap where the door was left ajar, just slightly, like the high-pitched keening of a wind tunnel, multiplied by ten. Daiki wanted to pluck his ears right out. “You guys wanna go for breakfast? We didn’t eat much last night,” Taiga said, voice muffled by the acoustics of the small space he was standing in.

“I haven’t showered,” Ryouta replied, still tapping away at his phone.

“I’m starving,” Taiga grumbled. He got out, threw on a shirt and continued, “Forget it, I’m going down first, then. You guys can join me later. It’s still early, anyway. Plenty of time for you to shower, pretty boy.” Then he exited the room without a further word, leaving Daiki with an absurdly bad headache, and Ryouta. Some friend.

The sun was barely up. Daiki couldn’t tell whether because it was actually that early in the morning, or whether it was just the cloudy Hong Kong weather, but the sunlight coming from behind the gauzy curtains in their room was weak at best. It did manage to illuminate the room, if only a little, like a cold, blue light. Ryouta’s hair was bathed in it, as if it was covered by a thousand tiny fairy lights. The sheen changed as Ryouta tilted his head up and down, scrolling on the touchscreen panel. It was fascinating to watch.

“You’re staring,” Ryouta pointed out suddenly, putting his phone away on the bedside table.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Ryouta smiled, showing teeth in a regular display of charm. Then his eyes softened, and he said, “This really brings me back.”

“To what,” Daiki croaked, desperately hoping that he was dead wrong about what he thought Ryouta had to say next.

“You’re really mean, Aominecchi,” Ryouta continued. He paused, as if thinking of what to say, then picked it up again. Daiki listened in silence, now training his eyes on the ceiling. Without looking, he already knew Ryouta was boring holes into his skull with his gaze. “I’m sorry. Kagamicchi took the spare bed last night because he knew I wanted the comfy one. And sleeping in the same bed with you, so closely, I thought of – well, you know what I thought of. I tried to forget, I really did, I knew you also wanted to. Honest to god, Aominecchi, I did try. But everywhere I go, I just bump into all sorts of reminders. You’re always around me. We play in the same band. We share the same room back home, for crying out loud. This,” he said, fingering the steel ring on his left ear, looking somewhat nostalgic, “every time I look in the mirror. And you’re, like, the biggest walking reminder of it ever. Everything about you.”

“Am I supposed to laugh at that,” Daiki said, his throat now uncomfortably dry. “Or apologise, maybe. Sorry for the trouble?”

“Can we try it again?” Ryouta said, testing the waters. “Just to know if it was really a mistake. At least I’m wide awake now.” He moved closer, and Daiki let him.

Ryouta kissed him softly and slowly, as if trying to coax him, to get him to open up, to get him to remember. Well, Daiki thought as Ryouta kissed his way down to his jaw, and then his neck, hands slipping underneath his t-shirt, how could he have forgotten? Even if he wanted to argue that he was drunk, the fact was that he had never ever gotten drunk to the point that he had forgotten everything that he had done while under the influence, and the fact was also that it was a collection of so many firsts that it was utterly unforgettable. The first time he’d had sex with a guy, the first time someone liked him enough to have sex with him on his birthday, although the other party was someone he did not expect it to be. He’d thought that it was going to have to be some long-time girlfriend. The first time he’d acted on a whim with Ryouta, especially Ryouta, who he knew held some kind of blindingly obvious torch for him and with whom he had reminded himself time and again not to get involved. Did he regret it? Somewhat. Maybe.

He let out a small moan as Ryouta kissed him again, and despite himself fisted a hand in Ryouta’s hair and opened his mouth wider as Ryouta kissed him deeper. Ryouta was an unfairly good kisser, this he could concede. As Ryouta shifted, he moved against Daiki’s body, his thigh pushing up against the soft cotton of Daiki’s boxers. It felt exceptional. Shit. If this carried on, they were going to end up jerking each other off right there and then, or more. True to prediction, Ryouta now had both hands at the hem of Daiki’s t-shirt, and he was dragging it up, slowly but surely. Daiki broke away, hands catching at Ryouta’s wrists.

“Stop it, Kise, I don’t want to h–”

“Is it because you’re fond of Kagamicchi?” Ryouta interrupted, now straddling Daiki’s waist, hands braced on both sides of him as Daiki held onto them. His lips were red.

“What? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” Ryouta replied, worrying his swollen lower lip, “I’m just good at sensing these things. You seem like you really like him.”

“That’s just,” Daiki said, burying his face in his hands, “Kise, stop talking rubbish. Kagami likes girls. I like girls.” His head was starting to spin. The entire thing had taken a very strange turn.

“How do you know that? How much do you know about him?” Ryouta retorted hurriedly, then seemed to have caught himself. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” Then he grinned a bit. “What’s up with us? We seem to be apologising a lot to each other, lately.”

He climbed off the bed and disappeared into the toilet, and Daiki was left to feel the full blast of the room’s centrally-controlled air conditioning without the warmth of a human body over him. He pulled the covers over himself and pretended not to notice the sounds of running water, or Ryouta stepping out and changing out into his clothes, or Ryouta saying, “I’ll make a move first, see you later” and shutting the front door behind him. Only then did he take a shower himself, feeling awfully nauseous. Was this what pregnant women felt like in the mornings? He congratulated himself silently on his sense of humour, then glared himself down in the mirror as he brushed his teeth. His eyes were bloodshot. Then he towelled himself dry and pulled a t-shirt out of his suitcase, pulling it over his head, before belatedly realising that it was one of Taiga’s stupid shirts. All the shirts he’d brought were Taiga’s, and just because they wore the same damn size. The same damn everything.

“Where the fuck were you,” Taiga said accusingly when he appeared for breakfast, “the buffet’s almost over. I saved some food for you. It’s not half bad, eat up.” Ryouta was sitting next to him, bent over a bowl of lukewarm-looking congee.

Daiki tugged at the chair across from Taiga and sat down, then reached for the plate of food Taiga had saved for him. “I went back to sleep for a while,” he explained, but Taiga was too busy stuffing his face to listen, Ryouta was stirring his coffee often and absentmindedly so, looking out of the floor-length window to his right and into the busy, grimy heart of the town, and Daiki, chewing on a piece of absolutely tasteless toast, just wanted to vanish from the face of the earth.

After breakfast, they collected all the things they needed from their hotel room, and waited in the hotel’s lobby for the bus that was supposed to bring them to the rehearsal. Ryouta went to fix his hair in the restroom, so Daiki and Taiga waited for him, seating themselves in the plush armchairs littered around the lobby. Daiki was mentally going through their setlist, but Taiga wouldn’t quit looking at him.

“What the hell is it? Spit it out.”

“You’ve got a hickey, you know that?” Taiga pointed out, raising an eyebrow. “Or at least, I think it is.”

“What?” Fuck. Daiki moved a hand to his neck. Ryouta.

“Where’d you get it from?” Taiga asked, frowning and running a thumb along the edge of the mark, pinpointing its location, mere centimetres above his left collarbone. Daiki shivered, recalling what Ryouta said earlier about Taiga, and what he thought Daiki felt about Taiga.

“Probably a girl last night, at one of the bars,” he lied nervously. Tetsuya had told him numerous times that he was generally very shitty at lying. He hoped it wouldn’t show. That, and that Taiga was too dim to actually notice when somebody was lying to him.

“Really,” Taiga doubted, “I don’t remember seeing it today morning.” Then he moved away, turning his head the other direction and clearing his throat, as if suddenly remembering that he was invading someone’s personal space.

 

 

9.

Daiki called Tetsuya later that night when they returned, after the run-throughs, outside the entrance of the hotel, amidst a crowd of chain smokers. Screw international calling rates, he needed to talk to someone and he needed it immediately. Tetsuya was notorious for not replying to e-mails or texts until you literally begged him to, if he thought your predicament was not worth dealing with – either he thought it was too trivial, or that it was some form of divine punishment. Sometimes Daiki wondered if things would have turned out differently if Tetsuya had stayed and not gone off to finish studying classic literature or whatever fucking pansy subject that was at some prissy university. 

“Hey, Tetsu,” he began as soon as the call connected after an uneasy half-minute, but found himself at a loss for words after he said that. He wasn’t sure exactly how to continue. In the end, he settled for, “Uh, how’re you holding up?”

“Aomine-kun,” Tetsuya replied, sounding exactly like he always did. Toneless and disaffected, which seemed to be his specialty. “Aren’t you in Hong Kong? I’m fine, thanks for asking. I hope you’re enjoying yourself?”

“Of course, this place is rad,” Daiki said, the words filling his mouth like cotton wool, and then he changed his mind, “okay, no, Tetsu, I’m having a really fucking shitty time here.”

“That’s a surprise; I thought you really wanted to perform overseas. Why?”

Daiki hesitated. “You’re probably not going to like what I’m going to say.”

“As with many things you say, but do go on.”

“I slept with Kise.”

A beat. “I’m sorry? I don’t think I heard you clearly.”

“Don’t be a fucking dick, Tetsu, now’s not the time.” One of the smokers who was standing nearby, hand on his hip, was starting to glare at him. Daiki wasn’t sure if it was because he was speaking in a foreign tongue, or because his voice was starting to escalate, or both.

“Please don’t use those words with me, Aomine-kun. When did it happen?”

“This is going to sound so damn stupid. It was my birthday last year,” Daiki began, then recounted everything that had happened since then, not without leaving out some significant details and tripping over every other word he said. He was pretty damn sure that Tetsuya was silently judging him on the other end of the line. 

“Is that all?” “Yes.” He’d skipped the bits with Taiga in them.

“You’re still as bad at lying as ever, Aomine-kun,” Tetsuya said, as if he had a transnational third eye. He sounded slightly amused. “Even over the phone.”

“Just play along, Tetsu.”

“Well, just try to keep it in your pants for the time being. Hang in there. We can talk about this again when you return. International call rates are very expensive, they must be bad for your wallet. I’m hanging up,” he said placidly, and really hung up. Tetsuya never used cuss words, but the message in his voice was basically “You’re fucked”. Daiki could discern that much. And Tetsuya had basically given him zero advice and stamped a huge “On Hold” all over his problem. He shouldn’t have called. He stared at his phone in disbelief, and the glaring chain smoker from moments ago barked out something incomprehensible to a shabbily dressed man who was standing with him. It probably had nothing to do with him, but Daiki felt like it was directed at him all the same. Even the filthy Hong Kong spring air, marred by what smelled like a toxic mix of sulphurous rain and nicotine, couldn’t have been more of a damper on his mood.

He walked a couple blocks down to the nearest convenience store, where he bought a few cups of instant noodles and some beer to pretend that he was shopping for food. When he returned to their room, Taiga and Ryouta were huddled together on the large bed, laughing at some silly video they were watching on Taiga’s laptop like a couple of high school girls at a sleepover. “Oh my god, that’s so stupid!” “You think so too? He shouldn’t have taken the rabbit out, the idiot…”

“Oh, hey,” Taiga said, perking up at the sight of the convenience store plastic bag. “Cup noodles? I haven’t had those in a while.”

Daiki grunted and unearthed everything. As Taiga got up and helped with boiling the water, Daiki looked in Ryouta’s direction as he removed the plastic wrap from the cup noodles. Ryouta was now reading something and chuckling to himself, his fingers moving swiftly over the touchpad of the laptop. Everything seemed fine. Just like last time.

 

 

10.

Daiki sometimes forgot how good Ryouta actually was, or how fortunate they were to stumble upon someone like him. They found him at a cheap public talent audition, which they had entered in the band category. Before they were due to go on, they watched the soloists, hoping to find someone they could convince to sing with them. Ryouta was singing some poppy ballad Daiki didn’t recognise, and the crowd was somewhat silent and awestruck. As they listened on, Tetsuya prodded Daiki, hard, in the waist, which nearly made him spit out the water he was drinking. The three of them approached Ryouta when the song was over, after he emerged from a gaggle of AKB48 wannabes telling him how great he sounded. “I don’t want to commit yet, I just like singing,” he said, shrugging. Undeterred, Tetsuya said, “Please at least watch us play later. If you’re still unconvinced, we’ll accept your decision.” Then, after Ryouta left, he shot both Daiki and Taiga a glance that said, quite clearly, “Some help you both were.”

They played three songs, all original compositions, which were the best of the bunch they’d already wrote. The judges didn’t seem to be all that impressed, though, and neither was the crowd. Figures. The songs, when Daiki thought about it, were pretty basic, both structurally and melodically, and Tetsuya was singing for them that day and he was total shit. His voice was hardly audible over the instruments, especially Taiga’s Neanderthal-style drumming. Daiki tried his best with the guitar solos inserted into all the songs, which were meant to be cheap imitations of whatever he thought sounded cool. They were designed to impressed, but were actually riddled with pathetic mistakes that the amateurs in the crowd hopefully weren’t able to catch. That would be fucking embarrassing, if they did. But he did catch someone tall and good-looking, hair bleached blonde, looking on from right of the stage, starry-eyed.

“That was really cool,” Ryouta gushed, fighting his way to the front to catch them backstage after their performance. He stared at Daiki. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone play like that! Can you teach me?” It was an amazing change in attitude. Previously, he’d been looking at Daiki like he was a head of unattractive, yellowing cabbage. He’d looked cold before, so it came as a surprise how enthusiastic he’d become.

“Uh, yeah, maybe later,” Daiki said, hoisting his guitar off his shoulders and avoiding any eye contact. He was a little taken aback by the suddenness of it all, and to be honest, he thought they literally had a 0.5% chance at enticing someone to be their lead singer just by playing a few crappy songs. What a sucker.

“Kise-kun, right?” Tetsuya had said quickly, voice crisp and hurried and businesslike, while Taiga looked on curiously from behind. It was the voice he put on whenever he spied an opportunity. Personally, Daiki thought he could see some kind of weird twinkle in his eye. “Thanks for giving us a chance. Would you care to join us for our next jam session? Just to try things out.”

Obviously they didn’t get into the next round, because Tetsuya’s singing was abysmal. In return, though, they did get someone to do the singing for them in the future. It was a blessing in disguise.

But Ryouta wasn’t only good at singing. Just two weeks into joining, Daiki knew that Ryouta was wasted on them. “You know, that talent show,” Daiki asked him once, “did you ever get into the next round?” Ryouta’s reply, immodest and flattering in equal parts, was, “Of course I did! And someone called me right after, saying that his agency was thinking of signing me. But my sister signed me up, and I didn’t really want to go in the first place. I’d rather be singing with you guys. It’s way more interesting that way.” Then he flashed his teeth, giving Daiki an outrageously dazzling smile, and Daiki bought it.

He could see why someone would want to snap Ryouta up before anyone else got to him. Ryouta was a real chameleon, with the stage presence of a small supernova. He could sing anything Daiki handed to him and pull it off with finesse within hours of practice. They’d play in bars, hoping to catch the attention of a talent scout or two, and the difference in the turnout was so obvious after Ryouta joined them that even a blind man would notice it. He just drew crowds to him, male and female alike. And he was so naturally chatty and likeable that he was able to handle crowd interaction and get it to talk back to him. (Prior to that, Tetsuya would handle all the pre-set intros, and his deadpan delivery made Daiki want to dig a hole in the stage and lie in there and never come up.) He was already the complete package. Simply put, Ryouta was now the star, and Tetsuya, Daiki and Taiga basically became background noise-cum-accompaniment. Not that any of them minded. Now, at least they were getting somewhere.

Initially, they just intended for Ryouta to sing. They didn’t really need him to do anything else, since all the instruments were accounted for. He was adamant on learning how to play the guitar, however.

“Teach me how to play, please?” he always pleaded with Daiki, “I’ll teach you how to sing.”

“Save it, I can’t hold a note. Seriously.”

He let Ryouta watch him play all the same. Ryouta would go, fascinated, “You make it look so easy, it’s so unfair,” and it made him feel light-headed all the time, like a fucking balloon on fire, whenever Ryouta sat in one corner of an empty studio and paid him all the attention that he could muster while he stood at the far end, playing his best. With a bit more coddling (“I really want to play like you!”) and a desire to prove Ryouta wrong (“I bet I could do better, actually, if I just learn”), he did start to teach Ryouta how to play. Looks were deceiving, because Ryouta took to it like a fish to water, without any serious musical training, and now Daiki really did feel that maybe it would be better for Ryouta if he left and went to pursue a solo career. But he never told Ryouta what he thought, because he was selfish, and also because his ego needed stroking from time to time and he, for some reason, took some kind of strange pride in seeing Ryouta progress this quickly.

Daiki liked to think that Tetsuya had been just that little bit fond of Ryouta, like how you would be fond of a lively, enthusiastic house pet you inherited from your grandparents, despite all evidence to the contrary. Taiga, on the other hand, got friendly with Ryouta quickly, because Ryouta wasn’t an asshole, unlike when he’d first gotten acquainted with Daiki. If anything, he would get mildly annoyed by Ryouta’s incessant chatting, but he would give in left to right to Ryouta’s demands (usually achieved via a combination of whining and said chatting), anything from making him food whenever he wanted it to letting him toy with his drum set and using his bedroom as a personal entertainment facility whenever the weather got too warm (the only air-conditioning unit in the entire apartment was in Taiga’s room). He probably thought that no one noticed.

It was obvious, of course, who Ryouta’s favourite was. He was always impressed with Tetsuya and Taiga, but when it came to Daiki, things were different. At first Daiki thought that Ryouta just liked him that much more as a friend, that the guitar was the instrument that Ryouta was most naturally drawn to, but soon he began to notice the differences in the way Ryouta spoke to him versus how he spoke to other people. The slight of a hip, the slant of a shoulder, how the tips of his ear would redden just slightly, the way his fingers would curl tight against Daiki’s skin whenever his hands came into contact. How he’d go off like a light bulb whenever Daiki told him he was playing well. It was an awful lot of body language. So Daiki thought, with mild and easy realisation, one day, while talking to Ryouta, “Ah, so he has a thing for me.”

After that teasing him became a habit, just to see how flustered he’d get, and how far Daiki himself could go with those taunts. Things like standing excruciatingly close, accidental-on-purpose bodily contact and pretending that he didn’t notice it, saying shit like, “You’re looking extra cute today”, just to watch Ryouta turn red and fumble at whatever he was doing. Secretly, the earring had also been something like that. A test to see how far he could push Ryouta and how much Ryouta would acquiesce. And if they hadn’t had sex, he was sure he would have taken every opportunity to rag on Ryouta about it afterwards. It wasn’t just a reminder for Ryouta; it was a reminder for him as well. He thought Ryouta would have removed it, but he didn’t, so there it was.

The thing is, now that he’d fucked things up so badly, he wasn’t sure that Ryouta would continue to stay on his account. They were the ones who invited Ryouta to join them, so it made sense that if he ever wanted out, it would be on his own terms. It would be as easy as signing a couple of papers, and they would have to look for a replacement. It would be troublesome, but if Ryouta wanted to leave, as easily as he had joined the group, then they would have no choice, and it would be on Daiki’s tab. “Huh,” Daiki remarked back then, when he was still unaware of everything, “there must really be something about us if you joined up so readily,” and Ryouta’s only response was to grin winsomely and say, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Ryouta was pretty damn amazing on the actual day of the showcase itself. He gave his one hundred percent like he always did, just because he could, just because he could make girls scream at the sleight of a hand and still be able to pull off his own solo perfectly and sing circles around everyone else. It was something really quite fucking beautiful to watch, that face under the lights, the undeniable charisma, but Daiki kept his eyes on his fingers.

The one thing that Daiki never bothered to explain, and Ryouta never bothered to find out, was the question of why Daiki did not give it a chance. The reason was simple – that he could never quite figure out what the two of them actually were, and beyond that, whether he actually wanted them to be anything. It was a simple, yet selfish, matter of not knowing how to move, and where to. If Ryouta ever did ask, Daiki was sure that he would get socked for giving such a shitty ass answer.

This was what Daiki was thinking as he played off of the melody, to the one-two of the drums in the background, to the stage shaking beneath his feet, under the watchful eyes of the unknowing crowd: You could have continued watching me in secret and I could have pretended not to know. I could have continued making fun of you and you could have pretended to hate it. Sorry for ruining it. We could have been good that way.

 

 

11.

“Goddammit,” said Taiga, catching the ball from underneath the hoop. “Not again.”

“Yup,” Daiki replied, matter-of-fact. “Lunch’s on you.”

“What about him?” Taiga complained, throwing the ball to Ryouta, who was resting at the side of the courts, watching them play. “He was way shittier than I was, c’mon.”

Ryouta caught the ball perfectly and smiled a smile without any malice in it. “If I took this seriously, Kagamicchi, you’d be eating dirt.”

They were back home now, resting after the concert. Their record was going to the presses and soon they’d have to do all sorts of promotion, going on shows where they could get the slots, interviews, filming a music video (their second one ever). Ryouta scored a solo photo call. Things were looking good, at least objectively speaking. There was no such thing as a fallout that Daiki had envisioned, prone as he was to imagining the worst, and life went on and the earth continued spinning around on its axis. Ryouta continued talking to him about all sorts of mundane, stupid things, and Taiga remained blissfully oblivious to the things that had happened during their trip. Daiki met up with Tetsuya a day after they returned, at some fast food restaurant far away from Taiga’s place so they wouldn’t get caught and have to answer the question of why they were having a mini-reunion by themselves without inviting the other two.

“You’re paying,” was the first thing Tetsuya said when he saw Daiki.

Tetsuya asked Daiki to go through everything he’d described to him days before, probably just to watch him get all uncomfortable and grumpy, as some kind of sick exchange in return for having him come down in person to talk about it. “Full and frank disclosure, Aomine-kun,” he said, like a clairvoyant who moonlighted as a professional sadist. He didn’t show any emotion throughout, but he was radiating glee in waves, and to his credit, also some concern.

“So, that’s it. It’s awkward as hell whenever I see them both, which is like, at least twelve hours each day. It’s almost at the point where I just want to pack my bags and go home, and I don’t care if Satsuki laughs. I’m not that good at pretending that shit didn’t happen, like Kise is.”

“I’m really curious, though. Let’s pretend you could choose, and that you wanted to choose. Who would you pick?” Tetsuya asked. “Theoretically,” he emphasised when Daiki glared at him.

“The hell would I know? Choose what? These are people you know, Tetsu, not pinups in a fucking magazine.”

“You know what they say,” Tetsuya said, ignoring him and sipping from his vanilla shake, “people are always seeking sameness. It gives them security. So it probably depends on what you’re looking for.”

“I’m not looking for anything. Stop trying to sound smart,” Daiki told him, chewing up the remnants of his teriyaki burger in distaste.

“Anyway,” Tetsuya continued, stealing a fry, “I’m just glad, as one of the founders of this band, that it hasn’t all gone to pieces, thanks to you. Knowing you, I would sooner take Kise-kun’s side. It’s all yours to screw up now, Aomine-kun.”

“You don’t even bother to check on what we’re doing these days. You bastard, I hope you never manage to graduate.”

“Sorry to disappoint. I’m four credits away from fulfilling my honours requirement.”

In the end, Tetsuya said he couldn’t volunteer any useful advice, which meant that Daiki basically bought him a free meal for nothing. He justified it, however, on the grounds that he had never found himself in such a predicament before, and was therefore not in a position to offer any insight. He did, of course, launch into a diatribe about how Daiki could either leave things be and see how they progressed, or become the master of his own destiny, grab life by its horns, and wrangle it until it surrendered and took the shape of whatever Daiki wanted it to, like all great heroes did in the history of mankind. Daiki told him that all that studying had gotten to his head. Tetsuya then asked if Daiki would consider probing the issue of an open relationship, which made him choke, hard, on his soda. It attracted quite a few stares from the patrons seated around them. At the train station where they parted, Tetsuya said, “Good luck, Aomine-kun,” and offered Daiki the world’s most sickening thumbs-up.

That was a week ago. Daiki decided to go for option one, i.e. do nothing, because option two required him to know what he wanted his life to look like. And in between that time and now he’d tried to minimise all human interaction within the apartment. He would not talk to either Taiga or Ryouta unless absolutely necessary, and would not initiate conversations unless they started talking to him first. Both of them had noticed it – Ryouta reacted by doing the same, and sometimes Daiki fleetingly wondered what it was going to take to get their relationship back to normal, back to how it was way before, but there was no telling what Ryouta was thinking about him at any given moment, whether he’d forgiven and forgotten or if he was still holding out for something. Their conduct vis-à-vis each other was almost businesslike now, with the kind of strange small talk that acquaintances so preferred. Ryouta was excellent at small talk, though. Therefore, unless one of them said something soon, the status quo would prevail. Taiga, on the other hand, often asked if there was something wrong with him. He was the one who’d suggested their outdoor excursion today, and he’d told Daiki beforehand that he needed to do something fun to loosen up.

They bought lunch at a nearby convenience store and ate right there at the basketball court, in a shady corner where some trees had grown far out in search for more sunlight. It felt like Daiki was back in school all over again. Two girls who were walking past did a double-take, but it was most likely a reaction to Ryouta, and in any case they weren’t approached. The weather was way too hot for dealing with girls anyway.

“You guys thought of where you’re going after promotions?” Taiga asked, opening up his second karaage bento. “They’ll give us a short break, won’t they? For like, a month or two.”

Daiki had thought of it. He wanted to go back home, definitely. It’d been years since he’d seen his own mother in the flesh, and he’d bet anything that his dad would probably beat him half to death for running off and doing his own thing without staying at home for more than three days at once. He also wondered if Satsuki had finally gotten herself a boyfriend. And it would be good if he could spend some time apart from the band to gather his thoughts.

Ryouta beat him to saying it. “I think I’m gonna go home for a while. My mom’s been nagging me for quite some time now. And my big sis is getting engaged! I’ll probably have to be around for that.”

His eyes met Daiki’s from where they were sitting across each other. He was probably thinking the same thing, then. Daiki cleared his throat, then began, “Yeah, I think I’ll go back home for a while too. My dad’s gonna –”

“If you guys have some time after that, wanna come with me to America?” Taiga interrupted. He’d set his bento down on the ground and was drawing hesitant, invisible circles on the concrete, chopsticks clutched in his fist. “I mean, you guys will have to save up for your own tickets. But we could all stay in our spare place, so you won’t have to pay for lodging. We can go watch basketball games – real ones, not just on TV – and I could teach you guys to surf. And we could meet the guys I used to play with, they’d be more than happy to meet other people who are making music. It’ll be fun. The weather is great in LA. We can ask Kuroko too, if he’s not busy.”

He sounded so enthusiastic about his proposal that the five-second silence that followed was almost too painful to bear. Then he opened his mouth and said, somewhat deflated, “You know what, maybe I shouldn’t –”

“A spare place? Kagamicchi, you have a spare house in America? How many houses does your family actually own?”

“Well, three, but one of my uncles has taken one –”

“That’s amazing! I’m definitely coming. I had no idea. I bet you have a full set of maids and butlers and everything. For when should we book the tickets?”

“I don’t know, but,” Taiga said, looking almost dizzy, and turned to Daiki, his face now split into an uncontrollable grin, “You coming along or what?”

Daiki wasn’t sure what to do. The chain of events had unfolded right before his eyes entirely too quickly, before he could process anything, and both Taiga and Ryouta were staring at him now, waiting for him to make a decision. He couldn’t take too long. He really did want to get away to have some time by himself. But perhaps it was something he absolutely had to do, but only for a short while, just to figure out what to do next, to figure out what it was that he actually felt, and then he had to come back regardless. He wasn’t the only one in this band; so were two other complete strangers who’d come into his life and strapped it to the seat of a rollercoaster ride. It was a complete accident, too, so he guessed he had them both to thank, for putting him on that ride – Ryouta, who was now chewing on the straw in his soft drink and looking like he was caught in his own push-and-pull scenario, in his own head, staring at Daiki, brows knitted together, like he wanted him to come along, and not to, at the same time; Taiga, who was looking the most expectant of Daiki he had ever been in the few years they’d known each other, and he never expected much from Daiki all along. The fact was that they had more to do with one another, and Daiki had to accept that.

Tetsuya had said, grab life by its horns and wrangle it until it surrendered. So he took a deep breath, relented, pushing his face into a grin that mirrored Taiga’s, and said, with conviction,

“Sure, why not?”

**Author's Note:**

> there are many other stories i would like to write about this story, prequels and sequels and other points of view, but for now i think this suffices (and i'm all written-out). basically this is the kind of aomine/kise/kagami dynamic i would like to write in canon but am too chicken to, so i put it in an AU. and even so i wanted to give it a typical BL game-type Bad End, but was also too chicken to do so. this is the longest thing i've ever written, and entirely by accident, so it may have been clumsy. thank you for reading to the end.


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